The looming debate at Toronto city council on transit funding has triggered a flurry of chatter about what projects should be built first, what money is available and what projects cost. The Post’s Natalie Alcoba digs into three points of contention.

Jockeying for funding.

It’s not clear what — if any — transit revenue tools Toronto council will endorse, but politicians are already talking about how to spend the money. Following in the footsteps of Scarborough councillors who are pushing for a subway, North York councillor James Pasternak wants to move a different project to the top of the agenda: the extension of the Sheppard subway to Downsview station. He will bring it up at a debate expected next week on what taxes or fees Metrolinx, the regional agency, should recommend for implementation across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

Mr. Pasternak says he supports Scarborough councillors who want the province to earmark the first $500-million of funding to Toronto to turn the Scarborough RT into a subway. The Sheppard extension should get funding concurrently, he argued.

“I can see a coalition of suburban councillors together blocking any kind of funding formula that takes money from the suburbs and puts them solely into a downtown relief line,” he added.

Some counterparts warn against ranking projects now.

“There is about half dozen projects that don’t have secured funding. To anoint any one of them as top priority simply to get a debate started is crazy,” said Councillor Adam Vaughan.

Scarborough city councillors and TTC chair Karen Stintz have pointed to a $500-million gap between the cost of the approved LRT line for the Scarborough RT and the cost to bury it. A January TTC report that compared options for the corridor suggests the difference between an LRT line and a subway is $500-million. But the report pegs the cost of the LRT conversion at $2.3-billion (not the $1.8-billion Metrolinx has budgeted in 2010 dollars to build it); the TTC estimates it would cost $2.8-billion to tunnel a 7.6-kilometre subway to Sheppard Avenue.

According to the TTC, the subway would stop three times and serve 24,000 people within walking distance, compared to a 9.9-kilometre light rail line that stops seven times and has 47,000 people within walking distance. For his part, Mayor Rob Ford said “as long as it doesn’t use any new taxes, I have no problem supporting” the Scarborough subway.

Mayor Ford and $1-billion.

The whole city knows where Mayor Ford stands on subways, but he confused matters some by saying on Tuesday: “We still got a billion dollars, we can start building subways with a billion dollars. We don’t need these new taxes.” It’s not clear what money the mayor is referring to and his office did not provide clarification by press time. It may be the roughly $1-billion — $650-million from the province and $333-million from the federal government — that at one point could have been allocated to his Sheppard subway east extension.

But that deal was scrapped last year, when city council opted to use $8.4-billion in provincial funding for four light rail lines. The contribution from Ottawa is tied up in the $1-billion Sheppard East LRT.

“There is no such money,” Councillor Gord Perks said of the mayor’s assertion. He also criticized Ms. Stintz’s support of the Scarborough subway.

“I’m really frightened for the city’s future when the mayor and the chair of the TTC are in a bidding war with money we don’t have over votes in Scarborough,” he said.